Something Human: A Conversation with Sofia Bohdanowicz and Deragh Campbell
![Something Human: A Conversation with Sofia Bohdanowicz and Deragh Campbell](https://s3.amazonaws.com/criterion-production/editorial_content_posts/hero/8046-/YxrGBbfAvqreGFaWkdiSiG8ixESfkZ_original.jpg)
Echoes of the past reverberate throughout the films of Canadian auteur Sofia Bohdanowicz. Working as a director, writer, cinematographer, editor, and producer, frequently in collaboration with actor Deragh Campbell, she has made four acclaimed features and ten short films that are love letters to the objects and memories she holds sacred. Her style draws on documentary, fiction, essay films, and detective stories, tying these eclectic elements together with the theme of excavation. Whether exhuming her family history, reimagining the life of a Parisian astrologer, or capturing her personal process of grief, her films investigate the mysteries beneath the surface of the everyday.
In her debut feature, Never Eat Alone (2016), Bohdanowicz cast her grandmother to play a version of herself, a woman who enlists her granddaughter to help her track down a lost love. The film marked the first time Bohdanowicz teamed up with Campbell, who had earned acclaim in independent films such as Matthew Porterfield’s I Used to Be Darker. Campbell embodies the director’s alter ego, Audrey Benac, a perpetually curious woman who uncovers buried knowledge about her family. Since working together on Never Eat Alone, Bohdanowicz and Campbell have become close creative partners, cowriting and codirecting a series of shorts and features (including MS Slavic 7 and Veslemøy’s Song) centered on Audrey’s quests. Taken together, their work calls to mind the formal and intellectual rigor of Chantal Akerman and Agnès Varda, filmmakers who used cinema to discover new ways of exploring their own lives.
Reflecting on the evolution of their collaborative friendship, Bohdanowicz and Campbell both describe it as a great love story, built on the intellectual, artistic, and emotional chemistry they immediately felt when they first met each other at Toronto’s TIFF Cinematheque ten years ago. To mark the arrival of a collection of their films (as well as Bohdanowicz’s solo directorial efforts) on the Criterion Channel, I spoke with the two women about the paths that led them to each other and the artistic values they share.
![](https://criterion-production.s3.amazonaws.com/k9pyBIsNTfNTVL3ck4QuLwrYA4yjhb.jpg)
![](https://criterion-production.s3.amazonaws.com/amYoBJB0gqTAGvI8emkk48QMHO9ZyE.jpg)
![](https://criterion-production.s3.amazonaws.com/aaupme2Y3MrhsaQn7PTbJmDAAO3VOx.jpg)